Major social networks in Japan have been forced to close hundreds if not thousands of online communities alleged to have been used for online dating, whilst police have launched a drive to close unregistered dating sites; all this comes as a result of a new law forcing any sites with dating activity to register with police or shut down.
An attempt to crack down on the popular schoolgirl job of prostitute, euphemised as “enjo kousai”, or compensated dating, is the reason for the ban.
With the choice to close or register, sites have little option, and major social sites Mixi and Mobagetown have been purging any suspect groups.
The major provisions of the restriction are designed to keep minors from accessing the services; ages should be checked by the management, by way of either providing copies or images of official documents certifying age, or by utilising credit cards or similar means to ensure minors are excluded.
With a full list of all the users of such services in hand, operators must also provide full details on demand to police, and can be ordered to close at the discretion of authorities. It appears no oversight of this capability is provided for.
Public access to such sites is also strictly forbidden, with registration now required in all cases.
The ban also lays out restrictions on who can run a site, making it clear that yakuza and convicted rorikon should not be involved.
Posts to a site which attempt to solicit under-age sex are strictly forbidden, with a comprehensive variety of posts covered. Fines of up to a million yen are possible for anyone (including the minors) making such offending posts.
Several thousand sites have registered with the authorities; it is not clear how many remain or how many have closed unrecorded as a result of the law. Police continue to hunt the uncooperative sites.
Considering that both the rorikon and the schoolgirls seem intent on actively seeking each other’s company by whatever means, it will be interesting to see if this has the intended effect, or merely popularises other means…
Via ZakZak.
These measures come in the wake of an increasing amount of state mandated Internet censorship in Japan; now all PCs and mobile phones must come with filtering provision, and a nationwide database of “undesirable” sites covering everything from porn to unpalatable political views has been set up.
This database has already been made the subject of ridicule, with vast numbers of sites misclassified by way of entirely opaque processes; more disturbingly, the system has at times been abused by ne’er-do-wells who report innocuous sites they wish to see filtered.
Lax checking ensures that these reports can result in an inappropriate ban, which is only repealed by a report from the website operator, requiring constant vigilance.
ISPs and savvy net users alike have been exasperated at the lack of technical consideration given to the matter by politicians, who in most cases are not well versed in Internet matters.
This doesnt affect me at all. I still have my 2D waifus.
fascist america spreads its dirty fingers everywhere
Not too hard to force them to stop by simply flooding the submissions for banning with all kinds of sites right?
I’m gonna delve right into politics here. The argument the Japanese government is making for this is the same argument that the Bush administration used here in the states with the god-forsaken Patriot Act that did little but piss the population off. We sacrificed a big part of our liberty (right to privacy) for the so-called “safety” of our country – I don’t know about you, but I find it terribly hard for there to be a proper justification for the use of Big Brother within the U.S. – 9/11 or not. Those neocon extremists here in the states use the “BUT WAT IF THAR IZ A TERRORIST” argument, but I haven’t seen this Patriot Act do anything to protect us.
What we’re seeing here in this article is Japan doing the equivalent of the Patriot Act was doing to protect the country not from terrorists, but from potential child molesters in a manner that is entirely draconian and out of character for a country like Japan. However, as the Patriot Act has shown, it did little but piss people off and violate our fourth amendment rights. It created fear of our government (which was pretty damn corrupt when run under Bush and Darth Cheney) and was entirely unnecessary to keep the terrorists we keep pissing our pants about out of our nation.
I can see the HUGE potential for abuse by the police here – I thought Japan was a capitalist economy, but what they’re doing here by demanding dating sites to “register” with the government is ludicrous and reeks of their Chinese neighbors next door, who willingly piss upon human rights for the sake of a “better and safer society”. It will only make the population more distrustful of the government and hinder the development of such sites.
Laws are good, but only if they make sense. This law doesn’t make any fucking sense. Put up some rules and regulations for these sites, yes, but demanding that these sites hand over all that personal information and register with the government? f♥♥k no.
Cool, that’s how China did it. And it has been working out pretty well so far.